The Organizer

In Turin at the turn of the century a textile mill runs fourteen-hour shifts. When a worker is maimed by a machine, the employees decide to ask for one hour less. They do not know how. A fugitive teacher who arrives in town, Professor Sinigaglia, teaches them how a strike is organised. The film is not interested in victory. It is interested in the price of organising: as the strike drags on, hunger begins, families split, a child dies and nobody wins. Even so it does not make the struggle look pointless; it simply refuses to hand over a cheap outcome. The form is the hard edge of Italian comedy: comic scenes set beside painful ones, a large cast, winter snow and the factory gate. Monicelli was a master of carrying comedy into tragedy, and here he makes the transition almost invisible. Mario Monicelli directed. The screenplay was written with Age and Scarpelli, and the three were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Marcello Mastroianni plays the professor, taking on glasses, a beard and a tired body and abandoning his star appearance entirely. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian cinema and films that look at labour history. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clear ending. The film closes bleakly and some of the workers in the crowded cast remain only names.